Ancestors Part 51

"City's doomed. Far as Van Ness, anyhow. Nothin' ain't goin' to stop that fire but water, and water's just what they haven't got. Lord! to think of that bay on three sides of the city. Talk about the Ancient Mariner. I don't live in the city, but I'll be sorry to see it go. Lord!

warn't that a shake? I was flung plumb out of bed and against the wall, and the house next to mine, or the one I war in, went plumb out into the middle of the street. Lord! what a yellin' there was inside! n.o.body hurt, but one woman went plumb out'r her mind. They've got her tied to the bed-post now. And what a lootin' of saloons there was until the soldiers marched in! Now, I hear, that there mayor has issued an order, which is to be pasted up all over, that any man caught lootin' anything, saloons or otherwise, is to be shot dead and no questions asked. Good job, that. I guess we're in for high old times, miss. I'm makin' for Oakland, where I live. I brought in a load last evenin' and stopped over. Some of my friends live down by the ferry, and I'll pick them up, if they want to get out. Don't you want to come along? My wife and me'll be glad to put you up if you can't do any better."

Isabel thanked him warmly, and a.s.sured him that she would be safe in any case, then discovered a loose half-dollar in the pocket of her jacket.

The man accepted it philosophically.

"You were welcome to the ride, but I'm not the one to say nay to a bit of silver so long as you say you're not hard up yourself. Guess it'll come in handy. Well, s'long. Good luck to you. I've enjoyed your society very much."

XII

The teamster had deposited her at Taylor and Jackson streets, and as she pa.s.sed the Trennahans' door it occurred to her to ask how they fared.

The house appeared to be uninjured, but the electric bell was useless, and it was not until she had knocked several times that an old Mexican servant answered the summons. Then she learned that the family had left for Menlo Park in their touring car immediately after the earthquake, as the boys were at the country-house with their tutor. The woman had been maid for many years to Mrs. Polk and had lived with Magdalena since her aunt's death. She was a privileged character, and during Isabel's visit had accepted her relationship to the house of Yorba and waited on her personally.

"So tired you look," she said. "Come in, no?" Then, as the invitation was declined, she leaned her stout shapeless figure against the door-frame and begged Isabel for an account of her experience. Isabel gave it briefly, and the old woman shook her head. "So terreeblay thing!" she sighed. "Seventy years I live in California and this the more bad earthquake I never feel. My mother she feel the great earthquake of 1812 in the south, when the padres plant a long straight branch in the middle of the square of San Gabriel, and it never stop shake for four months. Ay yi, California! I theenk we all go into the bay this morning, and I fall down twice when I run to see how little Senorita Inez she feeling. Ay yi!"

"Why did you not go to the country?"

"And who take care the house? The car come back bime-by for the other servants, but I no go. Si, I can go in the train--then--perhaps. But no in automobilia. Is devil, no less."

"Well, if you should be frightened come up to me," and Isabel went on hurriedly to her own home, suddenly reminded of the uncertainty of her relative's nerves. But Victoria was standing on the porch staring outward with such an intensity of gaze that she took no notice of Isabel's approach. And when Isabel reached her side, she too stood silent for a time. _The Call_ Building was on fire. This square tower of seventeen stories and a dome, with some seventy windows on each side, had caught fire at the top, and as the flames devoured the contents of one floor as quickly as possible that they might dart down another flight and gorge themselves anew, in an incredibly short time the two hundred windows in sight, and no doubt those in the rear, were spouting flames like the mouths of so many cannon: each sharply defined, owing to the indestructible nature of the walls. Volumes of white smoke poured upward to be lost in the black clouds above. At times the fire and smoke, on either side, torn by the wind, seemed to dance and gyrate in a Baccha.n.a.lian revel, taking monstrous forms, that exploded in showers of sparks, glittering like the fabled California sands. Above the burning district the smoke clouds changed form constantly. Sometimes they reeled along like colossal water-spouts. The roar of the fire waxed louder as one listened to it: a deep persistent energetic roar, as of a sea climbing over a land its time had come to devour.

Suddenly a curtain of smoke swept down and obliterated the scene, conveying a sense of respite, challenging the memory, although a moment later it was shot with a million sparks.

Victoria announced briefly that they were to have lunch of a sort, but for her part she would prefer a bath.

A bath, however, was out of the question, and, without washing the cinders from their faces and hands, they sat down to beefsteak fried on one of the oil-stoves used for heating the Mansard story, and canned vegetables. That much indulgence they might have permitted themselves, but human nature is p.r.o.ne to extremes, and they were tuned to a severe economy that might embrace more than water for some weeks to come.

Isabel sent a plate of sandwiches and a bottle of beer down to Mr.

Clatt, and the servant returned with the information that the faithful wharfinger was sitting on a chair in front of the launch, a pistol on his lap; and that already a small crowd was crouched like buzzards in front of him. Isabel asked Victoria if she cared to retreat, but the older woman shook her head.

"Do you?" she asked.

"Oh no. I shall remain until the last minute, certainly until I know what Elton's plans are. If the launch is seized we can go down to Fort Mason or out to the Presidio. Every one is in the same boat. I should hate being too comfortable. But I don't think you should sleep out-of-doors. It is always damp at night."

"I can stand as much as you can. I am quite fit again. And this is the first time, for heaven knows how many years, that anything has interested me. I shall stay till the last minute; and surely no fire could climb this hill. Did I tell you that Mr. Trennahan came up at once and asked me to go to Menlo Park with them? Ungrateful--but I have not thought of it since."

Isabel announced her intention to take a nap. "No one knows what may happen to-night," she said. "And I feel as if I had not slept for a week."

She fell asleep at once. Lady Victoria awakened her by bursting unceremoniously into her room.

"You must get up and look!" she cried. "The Palace Hotel and the other big newspaper buildings are on fire. The sight is something awful--and wonderful."

Isabel ran to the window. All the valley was a rolling sea of flame, and all s.p.a.ce seemed to be filled with enormous surging billows of smoke.

From every window of the Palace Hotel, an immense square building of some seven stories, from the great newspaper buildings, and from other brick and stone structures near by, tongues of flame were leaping; the wooden buildings were mere shapeless furnaces. Again a volume of smoke descended, and for the moment nothing was to be seen but a red blur somewhere in the midst of rolling black.

Victoria communicated to Isabel the information she had received from the neighbors, always coming and going. People were pouring out of the city, not only by the Southern Pacific boats to Oakland, and indirectly to Berkeley and Alameda, but by freight-boats and launches to the Marin towns. They were obliged to make a long detour round the base of the northern hills, as the water-front and the streets behind were a roaring furnace, although the fires had not crossed East Street. All houses in the towns across the bay had opened to the refugees, tents had been erected in the public squares, and emergency hospitals had been started before nine o'clock. The militia had been called out to a.s.sist the regulars, and also the Cadet Battalion of the State University. A Citizens' Patrol had been formed to protect the still unburned districts, each man provided with arms at the Presidio. People on the lower slopes were now in full flight towards the western parks and hills, as well as the Presidio, many being under the impression that the ferry-boats were not running. It was doubtful if a hotel or a boarding-house would harbor a soul that night; not east of Van Ness Avenue, at least, and many in that region were preparing to sleep in the Park and squares, lest the fire attack them from the south. Refugees, exhausted, were lying on the doorsteps and in the streets of the Western Addition.

Victoria relapsed into silence and Isabel gazed down upon the beautiful terrible scene--the curtain had rolled upward again--at the enormous tongues of flame leaping from every window, the showers of golden sparks, the swooping and soaring clouds, many of them white, with convoluted edges, and faintly tinted like the day smoke of Vesuvius.

These curled white ma.s.ses rolled among the black waves towards the west, and the low deep roar waxed louder as one listened to it.

All the wooden bow-windows of the Palace Hotel had been eaten off, but it would be hours before the stoutly built old hotel ceased to feed the flames. Sometimes sheets of fire seemed to drive from the apertures across the great width of Market Street, to be beaten back by a solid wall of flame. In the intense clear yellow light that bathed the street Isabel could see the twisted car tracks. More than once she fancied she saw a prostrate body, but it may have been an achievement of the shifting flames, and certainly nothing living moved down there. The mounted officers and their men were patrolling the blocks along all the northern front of the fire.

"Are you not in the least worried about Elton?" asked Isabel, abruptly.

"Not a bit. I never worried about him when he was a child. He was always the most agile and ready youngster I ever saw."

"But he is very venturesome. He might be caught in one of those furnaces as well as another, or killed by falling bricks."

"He is a man of destiny," said Victoria indifferently. "He will live to accomplish what he was born for."

Isabel, in truth, found worry as impossible as any other common emotion, nevertheless thought it odd that he did not come to them for a moment or send a message. She could appreciate his wholly masculine mood, his temporary indifference to the charms of her s.e.x, but he had an ingrained sense of responsibility, and was more considerate than the average man.

Lady Victoria returned to her vantage-point on the veranda, and Isabel went down to the garden fence where the three j.a.ps were standing, and asked them if they intended to remain--half the servants had already fled from the city. Two replied that later in the day they should go to Oakland where they had friends. Isabel told them that she should not part with what little money there was in the house, and they answered politely that they expected to wait for their wages. The oldest of the three, a respectable man of thirty, who looked like, and no doubt was, a student, announced his intention to remain.

"I can cook," he added. "Not well, but perhaps well enough for a few days. And perhaps if we are driven out I may go to the country with you.

I should be willing to work for anything you could pay me until things were restored to their normal condition--if you would be good enough to give me my evenings for study."

Isabel promised him the protection of her ranch-house, and stood talking to him for some time. His English was unusually correct and his remarks were more intelligent than those of the average man of her acquaintance.

He told her something of j.a.panese earthquakes, and was good enough to add that he had never felt quite so violent or so peculiar a series of earth movements as California had achieved that morning. He was curious to see the result as recorded on the seismograph, and to know at what hour it registered in j.a.pan.

"I think Professor Omori will come over," he said, modestly. "This earthquake will interest him very much. He will wish to study the ground."

"Were you not frightened?" asked Isabel, curiously.

"I appreciated the danger, but frightened--no, miss, I think I have never felt frightened. But I do not like fire. I have seen Tokio burn. I shall walk about constantly and see that it does not steal upon us from the north or west. Some silly person might make a fire, and all the chimneys must be cracked."

"I feel much relieved to know that you will patrol," said Isabel, wondering if she were being gracious to a prince. "Would you mind going up to the top of the hill and asking some one if he knows whether all the injured were taken from the Mechanics' Pavilion? It is blazing like a wood pile."

He went up the hill and returned with the information that all the patients, as well as the doctors and nurses, had been taken out, the last of them while the roof was blazing, and conveyed in automobiles to other emergency hospitals far away; and that the prisoners in the City Hall had been transported, manacled, to the army prisons in the same manner.

"One of the gentlemen said he saw Mr. Gwynne running an automobile full of nurses and patients--one of Mr. Hofer's machines," he added. "And that he returned twice at least. All the young men that own machines are acting very well, they say, transporting the injured, and making themselves generally useful. Many are on the roofs of the greater buildings with the firemen fighting the fire with blankets, and hose attached to the cisterns. A few buildings have been saved in that way, but not many, and more or less of the water has to be turned on the men, who catch fire repeatedly from the sparks."

Isabel went into the house and put on her hat. "I cannot keep still any longer," she said to Victoria, a moment later. "And now I am quite rested. I shall go down and see Mrs. Hofer, and reconnoitre for myself.

If Elton should come, ask him to wait for me here--he must need a rest--or walk down Taylor Street."

XIII

She found her lower neighbors still sitting on their doorsteps or standing in groups, but was told that many more had already gone out to the Western Addition with their valuables, fearing that the fire might come up the southern or eastern slopes before night. A large touring car was standing in front of the Hofers' door. The children and their nurses were in it, and Mr. Toole came out and took his place as Isabel reached the house. He greeted her for the first time since she had known him without a smile; and he looked very old and sad. Isabel heard Mrs.

Hofer's light high rapid voice within. She was standing in the large drawing-room, giving orders to a group of servants. When she saw Isabel she cried out as if confronted with a ghost.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, but not kissing her as usual; her mind apparently was divided into many parts. "I am relieved to see that _you_ are all right. I didn't know what might have happened up State. Did you _ever_?

Well!--Great old country this. Talk about living on the side of Vesuvius. And now everything is going, everything!"